On knowing myself and finding some real discipline.

I have rich-world problems, but I know it.

The other day I was quite overwhelmed. Not by classes, not by long, grueling, back-breaking work hours, not by struggling to feed my family or worrying about civil war breaking out in my community. I was overwhelmed simply because I realized that my original MCAT date was just one month away and I had only gotten through 5 out of 40+ sections of content review. It would be near impossible to do the content review topic by topic at the depth I wanted to, let alone practice the actual exam a dozen times, in just 4 short weeks. For some perspective, it takes me at least an hour or two to just do one topic in the content review.

For my fellow MCAT friends, I'll say that I'm trying to go at it alone. Well, technically, not TOTALLY alone. I have the Princeton Review and Kaplan set of MCAT books, but most of all I'm basing my study "plan" on the WikiPremed MCAT page which has great lecture videos and print-out study PDFs. I am using these in conjunction with the Kaplan books for starters (I find the Princeton Review ones sometimes contain a little too much detail, but I'm keeping them around for reference if needed). I know lots of people take prep classes offered by various organizations, but I also know it's doable without having to spend $2000+ and not having the flexibility to modify study plans a tiny bit when needed or not having availability near me. Yes, there are online forms of the class, but they're still $2000 (some even range up to $8000!!!). WikiPremed  MCAT page is open-source, well put together, and rather than simply reviewing physics, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and verbal reasoning in a vacuum, it tries to build the study plan from an integrated perspective - learning how the physics topics you covered in class explain the chemistry, and how the chemistry is reflected in what we see in biology. In this way, I think it's unique from other programs.

Now I had originally set my MCAT date as May 18th, and looking back that was wayyy optimistic. I was still in the middle of second quarter of organic chemistry and physics, both with quite a bit of lab work. Long story short, I simply dabbled in studying rather than strictly following a plan. I felt disorganized, unfocused, and unproductive.

Yesterday's near-meltdown was a result of feeling like I wouldn't be able to do it alone, that this overwhelming amount of information (from chemical thermodynamics to electrophilic aromatic substitution to how to approach lengthy and lofty philosophical topics) would be impossible to tackle no matter how much time I had. I felt like while this is something I've wanted all my life, the millions of people before me that have sat the exam must be super smart - not that they might just be more disciplined than me at the moment. I had two choices ... should I simply "do what I could", get a less-than-average score, and just plan on retaking the exam? Or should I put my ego and unrealistic optimism aside, pay the rescheduling fee, gather some more self-discipline, and set a more realistic test date after re-evaluating my plan of attack?

Talking with Ian for quite a while about all of this was really helpful ... he always knows how to combine just the right amount of support with a gentle amount of not letting me make too many excuses for myself. I decided that having adequate time to give a solid effort one time is much better than fumbling through this whole thing the first time around, then somehow finding the energy and desire to continue another two months studying just to retake it again. Solid, give-it-my-best, one-time shot at the exam, or unnecessary two-shot process which drags it all out even longer ... seems like a no-brainer, but it took some thinking through for me.

So, after spending all of yesterday cozied up in the cabin by the water eating homemade quesadillas, drinking a big pot of pu-erh tea, and watching movies with 4 layers of blankets all around to shake off this bad spell, I woke up today and wrote out my plan. Not just an arbitrary "do some verbal reasoning passages today" kind of plan, but a real, day-by-day, topic-by-topic plan of my content review. A plan that I will not deviate from. After all of that was done, I found that I had a solid month being able to focus solely on practice MCAT exams - two per week, with adequate time to review mistakes I made and rest mentally before attempting another. A solid month after physics class is done to focus my head around navigating the tricks of the test ... correctly identifying that what appears in the passage as a biology problem is actually testing physics principles, or understanding how to approach those touchey-feeley, nuanced verbal passages.

I'm feeling a lot better now ... a lot less overwhelmed, a lot more confident about what I'm going to do and how I'm going to achieve my goal score. I'm a lot more determined to own this test rather than let it own me, which is what happened over the past month of my unfocused "studying". I'm not going to let my study breaks drag on for an hour or two, and I'm not going to waste an hour on facebook. Even my love of cooking will have to be pulled back for now because doing extra dishes takes extra time. Efficiency, genuine discipline, and renewed focus. This is what I've always wanted and it's time I actually prove to myself that this is true. With the rest of my academic and personal background pulling for me as a solid applicant, my last hurdle at the moment is a solid MCAT score. Hundreds of thousands have taken it before me, and hundreds of thousands will take it after me, and this exam will be nothing compared to what will come in the future as a physician.

So with all that, I'm dedicating the next three months to myself - selfishness in a good way, I guess. Maybe the unexpected solar flare that will result in a beautiful aurora borealis visible even here in Washington tonight is a sign ... haha. Personal encouragement from the universe.

I guess in a month I'll update with how this plan has been going so far. The path to medicine is a marathon, not a sprint. But it's also far from impossible - it's just a matter of tackling one challenge after the next. I can try out being a little bit of a hermit for now ... like Thoreau in Walden. Write me a letter (I'll write back) ... or send me an email, but it's goodbye Facebook for a while. I'm sure I'll survive ;-)

Back to the kitchen! Southeast Asian food, and my new pu-erhs

I noticed that my blog has been severely lacking in food related posts lately. Well, now that physics is my only class (along with MCAT preparation), I've had the opportunity to get back into cooking some more. 

First up, everybody loves a good pad thai. However, some people prefer theirs to lead with a sweeter taste while others like the sour or salty flavors to dominate. I've always been frustrated with every kind of pre-made sauce you can find, even those actually from Thailand. When I recently found out how easy it is to make pad thai sauce from scratch in a batch big enough for multiple easy dinners, I had to give it a try. The greatest benefit of doing it yourself is that you can prepare this dish cheaply (often costing $7-12 at the restaurant) AND make the sauce tailored to your personal taste. Personally, I am not a fan of a super sweet or salty pad thai - the sour flavor is what I like to highlight. The fundamental nature of street foods like pad thai means that this is a dish designed to be prepared quickly - that's just how wok/stir fry cooking is. Simply keep this sauce ready in your fridge along with some rice noodles in your cupboard - you'll always be ready for a quick weeknight meal just throwing together whatever veggies you have in the fridge.

The ingredients you'll need: fish sauce, palm sugar, tamarind, and sriracha chili paste

 If you can find it, getting tamarind either in concentrated form, or in the above block form will save you the trouble of de-seeding, boiling, and straining the actual tamarind pods. I found the block form which is simply the pulp and fibers separated already from the seed pod. Just soak in about 4 cups of boiling water.

Then, after its softened, mash it around a bit with your hands to further separate the pulp and incorporate it into the water. You are trying to create a paste.

 After running the pulpy mixture through a strainer, it should be smooth like this. Concentrated tamarind paste (what you just made) can keep for a while in the fridge. Thai ingredients are not standardized to measure the same as our western recipes but it's still simple enough (and actually, more intuitive anyways). To make the sauce, you'll simply take two "clumps" of the palm sugar (1/2 the pack which is about equal to 1/2 cup) and add a bit of water (~1/4 cup) in a sauce pot over high heat. This will melt the sugar, and be sure to stir it around so it doesn't scorch. Then start with the basic combo of 1/2 cup each of fish sauce and tamarind paste that you made. Perhaps 1/4 cup of sriracha chili paste. As I mentioned, I like a more sour pad thai, so you can either add more tamarind, or simply add a little vinegar which works well to brighten it up. All of this is going in this same pot you've melted the sugar into already, and you will simmer the sauce to thicken it. Taste it, and adjust to your liking - the recipe will yield about 3 cups of sauce, plenty for multiple noodle dishes in the near future :)

The rest of your ingredients: chantaboon (rice stick) noodles that have been soaked in hot water for about 10 mins, then drained, chopped veggies, and fried tofu. The big principle in Thai cooking is to cut everything up beforehand because it's literally just going to be thrown together more or less immediately in the pan. Ingredients of relatively the same size mean same cook time, so keep it easy for yourself.

First, get some oil smoking hot in your pan ... since I don't have a wok, I'm using a large skillet but the principle is the same. You want really hot oil (use an oil with a high smoke point - not olive oil!) and you want to cook quickly and move quickly. Then, throw some garlic and your fried tofu (or meat) to cook. I'm waiting until my fried tofu gets crisp brown edges - if you're using meat, cook it through. Then, add a handful of rice noodles and a ladle (1/2 cup?) of sauce over the noodles. Stir and separate the noodles.

After a few minutes of quick stirring, the noodles should have softened. Then add a cracked egg or two into the center (having made a little well in the middle). Let it set for a bit, then stir up to turn into "scrambled" style eggs. Add a little more sauce if necessary, oil if your noodles are getting sticky/gooey, and toss in the veggies.

I like mine garnished with lots of cilantro and fresh lime .. Ian likes his with crumbled peanuts.

Enjoy with a view ... or your favorite brew ... or both.

To continue with a theme of southeastern Asian cooking, I also whipped up some green curry (I believe I posted once about how to make it from scratch quite easily a year or two ago) and Ian made a sriracha chili paste / soy sauce / garlic marinade for some pork chops we grilled up...

I am REALLY not a cupcake person, but the other night I was feeling the desire to bake a little treat for the week, so we whipped up some carrot cake base and made a coconut frosting to go on top. I finally tried out my special tart tin I bought from E. Dehillerin when we lived this summer in Paris, and made a small cake version of the cupcakes:

I have also been wanting to explore the pu-erh tea world more. Of course I grew up drinking "bo-lay" (Cantonese for "pu-erh") with dim sum ... the earthy, coffee-black style of fermented tea popular with Hong Kong Chinese. However, there's a whole world out there beyond just the restaurant quality stuff, and much like wine, pu erhs are sought after collectors for their aging qualities.

For those who aren't familiar, pu erh is a tea that is made in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan. It is the tea made from what some believe to be the original varietal of tea plant (broad-leaf variety), and this is the tea that has been transported along the famous Tea-Horse Road ... the Chinese would buy horses from the high plains Tibetan people and pay them in the form of compressed tea (which made it easier to transport). Although it starts off green and quite bitter, aging the tea allows it to continue oxidizing, changing those flavors slowly to a more sweet, woody taste. Green pu erhs are enjoyed for their "hui gan", or bittersweet returning aftertaste - at least, the good ones should have a pleasant bitterness that changes to a gentle sweetness. Aged green ("sheng") pu erhs are much more expensive and highly valued (easily costing up to hundreds of dollars for one cake), so serious pu erh folks will often buy a trusted recipe as a green cake, and age it themselves (if they can wait that long!). However, in the late 70s, a pile of green pu erh was left under a tarp which had a hole. It rained, and then the sun came out, creating a humid "greenhouse" effect, and it was noted that the green pu erh had turned brown as a result of the fermentation process brought on by heat and moisture. More importantly, however, this process was fine tuned and led to the development of "shou" or "cooked/ripe" pu erh, which is the dark brown colored cake that Hong Kong Chinese like to drink. It can be thought of as an artificial method of hastening the natural ripening process that can take 10 to 50 years for a sheng/green pu erh to naturally oxidize to brown and develop woody sweetness. In my own experience, however, there is no mistaking a naturally aged sheng for an (artificially) "ripened" shou pu erh ... it's pretty obvious when you taste it. There's so much more complexity in an aged sheng. However, one is not necessarily better than the other, and both have their place depending on my mood :-)

As a budding serious pu-erh enthusiast, I had to get a proper pu-erh pick ... my serrated dinner knife wasn't going to cut it (pardon the pun) anymore. This is the proper tool to separate the highly compressed leaves and minimize breakage of the leaf. It's really nice for $5 ... metal fittings in wood, and screws together

First up, from our friend Greg's wonderful tea shop www.norbutea.com .. this is a shou ('cooked') mini cake from the well known Haiwan factory. The name of this recipe is Lao Tongzhi ("old comrades") made in 2011. The "1999" date on the front represents the year the Haiwan factory was founded, and the 'old comrades' line celebrates the friends that helped him open up his factory after he left Menghai (an older, well known pu erh factory where he was manager)

Front of 100g cake

Back

Anne had an old clay pot she got from Thailand so I've been seasoning it for shou pu erh drinking. People often drink pu erh from Yixing clay pots. The clay, which is porous, absorbs the oils from the tea which is why one teapot is dedicated to one type of tea. While I'm not sure this is actually Yixing clay, it's still a great pot for drinking pu erh from. This is the fun part of gong-fu style tea drinking - my tea tray allows you to pour hot water (or the first wash of the tea) over the pot while the tea is brewing to maintain the teapot at the hot temperature required for brewing pu erh. Water drains effortlessly into the tray below. So beautiful.

The 2011 Haiwan Lao Tongzhi tastes like a great everyday shou pu erh. I once had a taste of a 10 year old Hong Kong stored (humid environment) shou pu erh which was so silky smooth and rich. This cake, being only two years old, definitely lacks that depth of taste. But it's still great, with a nice "brightness" that signals its youth, along with a gentle sweet twiggy woodiness. Not mind blowing, but a solid pu erh nonetheless. The size of the cake is really cute too, and I can see some people collecting this little guy. I might eventually get another cake (a great bargain from Norbu) just to store long term for fun.

My next "shou" acquisition: 2010 Menghai 7572 cake (357g). This shou pu erh in the past has been regarded as a good "standard" by which many other new shou pu erhs are judged. I figured why not get used to it myself ... after all, I should use this as a standard as well, and the price wasn't bad for this cake. Pu erh factories often use a four digit number (like 7572) to convey information. The first two numbers "75" represents the year this particular recipe was created (1975). The recipe is the particular mix/blend/ratio of smaller and larger leaves, leaves from different mountain areas around Yunnan, etc. The next number "7" in this case represents the average grade of leaf used. According to my research, higher numbers represent larger leaves, but this is not an indicator of quality. A mix of smaller and larger leaves is necessary to achieve the goal "taste" for each recipe. Finally, the last digit represents the factory. "2" means the cake was produced by Menghai Dayi factory.

Menghai has introduced this new anti-counterfit sticker. I have verified placement of the "S" cut, the hologram, and small "taetea" border and to my eye all match up as authentic. Woo hoo.

Front of cake

First infusion after a wash held up to the light ... not totally crystal clear. I'm told that clarity of the liquor improves with age, so this is a sign that the cake is still young (it is, made only in 2010).

The Menghai 7572 definitely has a more "full" taste than the Haiwan 2011 Lao Tongzhi. However, it's still not like the 10 year aged Hong Kong wet stored shou I tasted as a sample. It has a more gentle sweetness and lacks the brightness of the Haiwan, and I can definitely see how this is a good standard by which to compare other cakes. I've had a couple tastes of it now, and my personal preference is to use a lot of leaf and slightly longer brewing time to get a richer, woody sweetness out of the tea. I think storing this tea for longer time will hopefully continue to let it develop some deeper richness, but the change with shou pu erhs is much less dramatic than green sheng pu erhs.

Now for the green/sheng pu erhs...

One of my favorites which I've had before from Greg at Norbu is the Yiwu Mountain bamboo pu erh. It's a sheng pu erh, but the minority people who make this tea stuff it into a fragrant species of bamboo stalk. Then, the tea is roasted over a fire, allowing the bamboo to impart its fragrance into the tea. Eventually, the bamboo stalk is split open, and there you have the tea! I first had this two years ago in 2011 while first living in Seattle, and Greg still has some stock left, so I bought some more. Now this tea is almost 5 years old and the taste is much different than when I remember having it before. Ah, the joys of seeing/tasting pu erh as it ages...

Since I dedicated the clay pot to shou pu erhs and I don't want to "contaminate" the clay pot, I brew my sheng pu erhs in the gaiwan instead. You can see how this tea is compressed into the bamboo since it still retains the shape.

 Liquor is clean and clear light yellow. The steam from the leaves has a heavy note of tobacco sweetness mixed with smokiness. From my memory, the bamboo fragrance has faded a little bit, but more importantly, the bitterness of the "green" and young nature of the tea I tasted two years ago has mellowed out a lot and a beautiful sweetness has developed. While in the past I had to brew carefully to avoid unwanted excess bitterness, now even with extended brewing times, the tea doesn't become undrinkably astringent. This is a great verification of the fun nature of the world of pu erh teas ... you can really tell the difference.

The Xiaguan tuochas. So far we've seen pu erh compressed into cake form (beeng-cha), and even into the unique "nugget" shape of the bamboo stalk, but another very popular form is called "tuocha" - it's like a small bird's nest. The Xiaguan factory is known for making different kinds of fun tuochas, so I got a few new sheng tuos to compare.

First up, this is the "happy tuo" from Xiaguan. It's an FT ("Fei Tai") production which is to say that it's a high grade of leaf compared to normal grade commissioned by a large exporter for shipment to Taiwan. I just thought the hexagon box was really fun, but I was pleasantly surprised how delicious this tea was.

This 100g tuo cha was made in 2008, so like the bamboo pu erh, it's had about 5 years of aging so far

Gorgeous white buds are visible on the outside of the tuo. This is a beautiful tea to look at.

 It brewed up as a nice, thick sweet yellow broth. In the first couple of infusions, there was a noticeable smokiness present, but it wasn't overwhelming or off-putting at all. Thick mouthfeel, and sweet taste. I really loved it and will be getting more for the future. At already 5 years old, I think holding one or two more tuos for future drinking (when it's 10 years old?) would be really wonderful, and at just $7/piece, it won't break my bank like some other $200 or $300 cakes might! A fun, collectible packaging and a great quality for the tea itself - five stars from me.

Next up is another Xiaguan sheng. This one is a 2011 "gold ribbon" sheng tuo cha, and the gold ribbon is supposed to signify the premium nature of this blend made from leaves from Wu Liang, Yun Xiang, and Yun Long mountains. Supposedly the tea was blended to have a good "cha qi" and aroma. It's definitely more fragrant than the 2008 happy tuo, although I attribute that to its young age since the fragrance tends to wear off after time. 

First brew was immediately VERY strong. Like, hit-me-in-the-throat strong. Smoky and tobaccoey, but also quite peppery. After being so accustomed to the gentle sweetness of the 2008 Happy Tuocha, I was smacked in the face by the boldness of this one. I guess I had mistakenly thought that "premium leaf blend" meant "gentle and sweet" which is not a correct assumption. They are definitely right about this being blended for "cha qi" though - it's strong and will hold up over time. This is a tea that I definitely think needs to age a while. If it mellows a little bit, it will be so delicious. It has a good strength that I hope will develop into a lasting sweetness in the future. I'll hold onto this one and let it age on the shelf for now.

Finally, my last Xiaguan tuo .. this one is simply called 2012 "Jia Ji Tuo". "Jia Ji" is the name for the "first grade" level of leaf used. Of the three Xiaguan tuos, this one is easily the most fragrant. Again, I attribute that to the fact that this is the youngest.

The brew was clear and yellow. Initial taste was really quite mellow which surprised me a lot since I was expecting even more bitter than the above 2011 yellow ribbon cake. Very gentle smokiness with a little bit of sweetness in the middle, but then it came ... a strong bitterness at the end. This did translate to a great aroma that you can feel in the back of your nasal passages after swallowing, but the bitterness seemed to continue to get stronger even after swallowing - and it didn't transform into the "hui gan" sweetness. Of course it's only a 2012 so this sheng is the youngest. Definitely one I'll age more and see how it holds up compared to the others. I was really surprised about the gentle, mild start for this tea, but the ending bitterness was a little strong so I'll give it time. It will be interesting to compare this with the golden ribbon tuo in the future since this guy started off mellow and turned strong, while the golden ribbon was very strong upfront but mellowed towards the end.

In the meantime, the 2008 purple happy tuo is definitely on my buy-again list!

Until next time ...